


Andromeda

by MabelLover



Series: Moirai [4]
Category: Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Friendship, Gen, how do you tag, it probably is a crush on her side, might be seen as a crush, obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22243684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MabelLover/pseuds/MabelLover
Summary: Father dies and Flora is left on the tower.She's having none of it.Or, Flora tries to break free from her past, meets new people, and makes a friend.
Relationships: Clive & Flora Reinhold, Flora Reinhold & Emmy Altava
Series: Moirai [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1554079
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Andromeda

Father dies and Flora is left on the tower. It was coming, she knew it. Father had been ill for as long as she could remember (she suspects that Mother's death took quite the blow on his health), and he had been bed-ridden for the last few months. The village attended the funeral at the Manor’s grounds and many shed tears for the kind man who was responsible for their lives.

Flora does not cry. Her eyes had been dried from all the crying sessions after she realized that Father would not get better.

Instead, she rages.

In the comfortable prison that is the little cottage at the top of the tower, Flora watches the candidates to the Golden Apple as they enter St. Mystere. She hates it. It makes her feel like an object and not a person. Father never asked her what she wanted - no, instead he always made the decisions for her. He never asked if she wanted Dahlia, he never asked if she wanted an entire village tailored for her. He knew that he was going to die but never asked what she wanted to do after that.

Bruno comes often to the top to talk to her, perhaps because he fears that he will become mad without actual human interaction. Flora doesn't crave such things. Sometimes she thinks that she did become mad.

Many come to find the Golden Apple. It is not uncommon for different people to be in the village at the same time. They arrive, stay and leave without paying much attention to each other, Flora notes, and devises a plan.

She dresses in one of her most inconspicuous outfits, a plain green dress, and her hair is now in a bob cut. She takes some jewels and smaller valuables in a fabric bag and leaves the village with one of the groups.

* * *

Flora lives in London and works as a florist.

Her employer, Diane, found her when she first arrived at the capital and took her in without asking too many questions. Her husband helped Flora find a pawnbroker to sell her items to, and she paid for the first month of rent for a room in their house with the money she got from it.

The little shop she now works in is very busy, and Flora is picking flowers and cutting the stems and arranging the blooms all day long before going up to her room and falling asleep in her bed as soon as she touches it. She's never had to work before, privilege of being a rich noble lady, but she is getting used to it.

Sometimes she thinks that she can relate to Bruno and his constant tiredness now.

The best days are the Sundays. The store is closed, and Diane takes Flora and her daughter, Aurora, around London. At Flora's request, they often stop by the British Museum, which has an extremely interesting exposition on the Azran civilization. At Aurora's, they go to a small café and eat cake.

Flora tries to draft a letter to Bruno sometimes, but never gets it right. She gives up on it.

* * *

A gentleman comes to the shop one day when Flora is working and calls her by her real name.

She'd been going by Aroma Aurelia. No one knows who she really is because the Reinhold family, while noble, wasn't very well known. And, for some reason, there weren't any news of a missing young baroness.

But this man knows. And he asks her to come back to St. Mystere and help solve the riddle of the Golden Apple.

Flora says no almost too quickly. She then gives a rant of how she doesn't want to be tied down to someone who happened to be smart enough to solve Father's puzzle when she can be free. She asks him to leave and not come back.

He doesn't bother her again.

* * *

Flora begins to call herself Aroma in her mind and not just out loud.

She wishes to leave it all behind. Father, Mother, the village, the robots. Cutting herself from her roots is the best thing that she can do for herself, she thinks.

Sometimes she thinks of Bruno and how he deserves to know what happened to her. But she can never pick up the pen.

* * *

Aroma meets Emmy Altava.

The woman comes to the shop not to buy flowers but to stare at Aurora. After an embarrassing misunderstanding, she explains that the toddler reminds her of a friend that had died a few years ago. Her face shows regret and guilt.

Diane invites her to dinner, and again the next night, and soon Emmy is a constant presence in the house. She teaches Aroma how to defend herself with her bare hands - it's important to know how in a big city -, speaks of adventures around the world, of stories that she uncovered for the newspaper she works for. She teases Aroma and ruffles Aurora's hair.

In the nights that Emmy sleeps on the couch, Aroma can hear her turning incessantly. One time, she went to get a glass of water and found her mumbling apologies under her breath, tears in her eyes. Aroma knows that it has to do with the stories that she doesn't tell - when she stops the tale in the middle, saying that she will continue another day.

Aroma remembers Father before she can stop herself and wonders if he, like Emmy, cried apologies in his sleep. She wondered if Mother heard them.

* * *

Aroma has a bad feeling about Clive Dove.

There's nothing inherently wrong with him, besides his cold attitude and bit of snark, and she isn't sure where she got this bad feeling from, but it makes her weary of Emmy's coworker.

Speaking of which, the older woman was standing at the entrance of the shop with an amused look as she argued with Dove about getting him out of work for once. He needs fresh hair, she says, and to hold off the paperwork for a while. He doesn't share her light-heartedness and scowls at her.

Emmy advances in large strides and takes Aroma by the arm before shoving her in front of Dove and declaring that she got him a date. He protests immediately and Aroma tries to as well, but the yellow-clad woman simply ignores them and throws them out of the shop, telling them to have a good time. The flower shop's door closes and, after a couple of minutes, Dove helps the girl up and motions for her to follow him, muttering under his breath that Emmy will never leave them alone unless they do what she wants.

He takes Aroma to a coffee shop and orders tea. They sit in an uncomfortable silence - Aroma looking at her lap and Dove pretending to read the menu. He awkwardly asks her what her favorite flower is, trying to make conversation, and they have small talk about flower meanings. It develops into personal topics and, before long, she is hearing him talk about his parents. She speaks of her own, leaving out the nobility part, and mentions their death. Dove looks at her with understanding after hearing it.

In the end, he asks her to call him Clive and Aroma finds that she no longer has a bad feeling about him.

* * *

Emmy has been teasing Aroma about Clive for weeks now, and all that the girl wants is a bit of peace and quiet, hopefully soon.

The woman has other plans, though, and mentions Clive at every opportunity available. 

She talks about his recent articles and cuts them out for Aroma jokingly.

Aroma keeps them in a box under her bed.

A few days after Emmy leaves for a story in the other end of the country, Aurora asks to go to the park during Aroma's lunch break. As the toddler plays around, Aroma is approached by a figure. She turns her head to look and looks at Clive's eyes. He is a bit more worn out than when she met him, and now with dark circles under his eyes, but still smartly dressed. He sits in the bench next to her and silently looks at the playground.

When Aroma gets up to go get Aurora, he calls out to her and tells her that she should get out of London for a few days. Along with the people she loves. When she asks him why, he simply stares at the ground before passing her a note. He turns away from her and leaves.

At home, Aroma opens the note and finds written in it the following:

_I wish we could have been friends._

* * *

Aroma convinces Diane and her husband to go on a holiday at the seaside. 

They stay in a small cottage near a beach and at night they hear crickets and see fireflies. During the day, Aurora and Aroma make sandcastles and play in the shallow part of the sea while Diane sleeps on her towel and Albert, Diane's husband, tries to fix a small radio.

It's during one of their great architectural efforts to create a city made of sand that they hear it. London had been attacked. Hundreds dead, more missing, and more than half of the city destroyed or on the verge of it. The Scotland Yard arrested the ones responsible for the attack and the kidnapping of the Prime Minister but are still trying to figure out who helped willingly and who was forced to. During her shock, Aroma's mind filters the information and hears only one name.

Clive Dove. The one who destroyed London.

_I wish we could have been friends_ , she remembers, and now she understands what he meant.

* * *

Aroma decides that this isn't the time to doubt herself.

She looks at the entrance of the village of St. Mystere and shouts, asking for the bridge to be let down. When it is, after solving a particularly annoying puzzle, she quickly navigates the streets, paying no attention to the gasps of the villagers when they get a closer look at her, and heads to the tower.

There, she finds Bruno. He looks older, his face wrinkled more than what she remembered, his head balding. He stares at her, seemingly believing her to be an apparition, and Aroma jumps from step to step before throwing her arms around him. She apologizes for not telling him that she was safe, and he apologizes for not talking Father out of his plan.

Aroma leaves St. Mystere with the populace waving at her, Bruno in the front row. This time she can say goodbye properly.

* * *

Hello, she says, and he answers in kind through the bullet-proof glass. They share a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me what you think!  
> Just a small note, Flora is a bit OOC but that's the point. I don't think that she would have never left St Mystere the way she is. This explores a what-if.


End file.
